:) Excerpts : The 1968 Hollywood film “Planet of the Apes” was actually based on the novel of the same name by the French writer Pierre Boulle, who had been captured on the Mekong River in 1943 and served the Japanese as a prisoner of war. “I loved the film as a boy,” Heartfield says. “‘Planet of the Apes’ was great. I recall early on where Charlton Heston looks, and he realises that things aren’t quite right because there is a monkey, a gorilla, on horseback. So that is a very powerful image.” He says Europeans and Americans had an idea of racial superiority, that the white races were basically the leading powers. “So the Japanese victory was, more than the German victories, an immense moral shock to that idea,” he says. “And in the end, I think, it demolished that idea. It is very hard to say, knowing what we know about what the Japanese did to the people. “Unpatriotic History of the Second World War” has brought Heartfield a lot of criticism, and he admits he can’t get away from the fact he has written quite a polemical book. However, he also feels history is always illuminated by the present. “Sentiments in the world have changed,” he says. “Colonialism is seen today as a bad idea, largely. I mean I don’t think that is non-controversial. So it is a surprise to learn that Churchill fought the war to save the British Empire and British rule in India. It is a surprise to us because we forgot to adjust our understanding of the past to reflect our contemporary views of where right and wrong lie.” Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London. gulfnews/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/weekend-review/james-heartfield-setting-the-record-straight-1.1249638
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 20:03:18 +0000
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